Using Printful

How to set up Printful with OrbitKit

Jeff Schnitzer avatar
Written by Jeff Schnitzer
Updated over a week ago

Products supported: See below
โ€‹Title limits: Varies by store type
โ€‹Description limits: Varies by store type
โ€‹Tag limits: Varies by store type

There are a number of gotchas, please read carefully. Because there is a complicated chain of communication (eg OrbitKit -> Printful -> Shopify), there are inherent limitations to this integration that do not exist with more direct connections.

Printful works more like an OrbitKit Plus platform than an OrbitKit Fulfillment platform. Instead of having a blueprint editor UI in OrbitKit, you create Printful blueprints using links to example listings.

Authentication Instructions

An OrbitKit venue corresponds to a single Printful "Store". If you have multiple Printful stores, you will need to create multiple venues - for example, one for your Printful/Shopify store and one for your Printful/Etsy store.

Connecting an OrbitKit venue to a Printful store has two steps:

  1. Use Airlock to establish a connection to your Printful account

  2. From your venue page, connect to a specific Printful store

Careful! When connecting to a Printful store, be sure to pick the correct store in the tiny easy-to-miss dropdown box in the authorization dialog. Otherwise you may end up creating a new store...

Blueprint Setup Instructions

Just like other platforms, you grab the "edit" URL to a product. It looks like this:

Unlike most POD platforms, a "product" in Printful corresponds to a single physical product - say, a Bella Women's Tee. This means you will probably have many blueprints.

Synchronization

There's a chain of synchronization; OrbitKit syncs to Printful which syncs to Shopify/Etsy/etc. We synchronize what we can, but Printful does not have the ability to synchronize everything - and it varies by shop type what they will synchronize.

Generally, these properties will synchronize

  • Title and description

  • Pricing

Generally, these properties will not synchronize (they are set once on the initial publish):

  • Tags

  • Artwork positioning

  • Product (you can't change the product by replacing a blueprint)

Artwork Positioning

We top align images on apparel and vertically center images on other products. Normally we constrain artwork to the printable area, but if your blueprint is overscaled (say, a large repeating pattern) then we overscale the design as well.

If you find anything that renders less than perfectly, please reach out to support.

Multiple Sides

OrbitKit understands multi-sided blueprints. We assume that the first placement (usually 'front') is the image you want to replace.ย 

  • If you use the same 'front' image for other positions ('back', 'left sleeve', etc) then we will replace that with your design in all of those positions.

  • If you use a different image for other positions, we leave them as-is on the newly published item. This way you could, for example, create a blueprint that always puts your logo on a sleeve.

Gotchas

  • We have tested Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, Woocommerce, Bonanza, Wix, 3dcart, Storenvy, and Wish. If you use other marketplaces, let us know!

  • Hats and other embroidery products are not supported.

  • We can't determine the mockup style (Flat, Lifestyle, etc) from your blueprint, so there is a selector on your OrbitKit blueprint page.

  • Printful allows you to create heterogeneous product (say, different brands of tshirts for different sizes). OrbitKit cannot currently use products like this as a blueprint.

  • Use real artwork image(s) in the blueprint, rather than their text design generator.

  • OrbitKit adds the product name to the published title. For example, "My Cool Design" might become "My Cool Design Long Body Urban Tee". You can customize this with text templates.

  • OrbitKit adds Printful's default product description to the end of your description, separated by a couple blank lines. For example "This racerback tank is soft, lightweight, form-fitting...". You can customize this with text templates.

  • Since OrbitKit syncs to Printful, and Printful syncs to the final marketplace, there can be a delay of several minutes before changes propagate.

  • Deletes take especially long.

Ebay Gotchas

  • Ebay products are always published with the default shipping costs. Ebay in general is more experimental than the others.

  • For Ebay (and possibly other) store types, be sure the blueprint does not have 0 inventory for any variants. Printful pulls this from the Ebay listing itself.

Etsy Gotchas

  • Printful always publishes Etsy products in draft mode. You'll have to explicitly push them live (and pay $0.20) at Etsy.

  • For Etsy products that have gender (Unisex/Male/Female), OrbitKit always selects Unisex irrespective of how you created the blueprint.

Wish Gotchas

  • Wish does not re-synchronize titles or descriptions. This is a limitation of Printful.

Amazon Gotchas

  • Updates are impossible; publishing is a one-time only event.

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